If you don’t follow college football, here summary: The BCS is a computer-based system that creates the official college football rankings based on a complex set of stats (# of wins, conference position, strength of schedule, etc).  The results are used to determine who will play in the national championship game.  The problem with this is that many times teams with 1 losses have been placed in the championship game, while undefeated teams get shut out.  This year is especially contentious, as there are 6 undefeated teams, but the BCS has pretty much come out and told TCU, Boise State and Cincinnati that they have no shot for the championship game.

With the success of March Madness in College Basketball, combined with the fact that Division 2 & 3 football have a playoff, it’s puzzling why College Football hasn’t adopted a playoff system. One of the popular playoff alternatives is "the Wetzel plan", which puts together a criteria for a 16-team playoff.

Earlier this week, I saw the story in Deadspin how the BCS has employed a new PR firm, whose first actions was to establish a Twitter and Facebook presence in this Social Web World.  This makes enough sense, but they’ve committed two serious errors in judgment: 1) Forgetting that they’re a controversial and much-despised, and would likely have more critics than fans; 2) Actually engaging their critics by baiting them into debate, without fully participating in the conversation.

Hilarity ensues: For the past few days, it’s been a fun game to do a search by the BCS’s username: @InsideTheBCS and see them make a straw man claim, then watch their critics go to town on them without any response.  Check it out below:

What’s been great is that the critics have actually been presenting good arguments.  There are a few personal attacks here and there, but for the most part the responses have been well-reasoned (for as much as you can be in 140 characters or less).  The problem is that @InsideTheBCS doesn’t really respond to any of the valid points, it pretty much continues to make their contentious, canned responses that they’re given phrased differently.  They do respond to some users, but mainly when they have the canned answer in their wheelhouse.

Let this be a social media lesson to brands/organizations, especially unpopular ones: Unless you’re willing to engage in an authentic conversation with your critics, then controversial groups should probably stay away from social media.  Having your PR Firm running this interference is only hurting you in the court of public opinion.  Worse yet, it’s banding your enemies together.  While I’ve always hated the BCS, I really didn’t care much about this issue until three days ago – when it became entertaining to have this conversation.  Something tells me that the people doing PR for the BCS are having a very lousy week.

>> 5 Reasons for Bands & Musicians to Quit MySpace

It’s no secret that MySpace is on it’s way out.  The prominent rise of Facebook, coupled with our pain threshold for spam, flashing graphics and blaring noise has worn out MySpace’s welcome.  Long ago have I abandoned any meaningful time spent at the spent for my personal profile.  For my band’s profile, I still log into MySpace a few times per week, but the ROI has continued to decrease for our band and MySpace.

The biggest thing you can take away from the article is Reason #3:

Other bands are not your primary source of attendance

According to the statistics I’ve heard, there are roughly 8 million bands on MySpace, and you have 15,000 of them as friends! Unfortunately, those people are probably not buying your albums or attending your shows. While they may be good to do a show swap with, or bro down with for a tour some day-they’re not helping you pay the bills and put butts in your seats.

The 10% of users that are real people more than likely COMPLETELY ignore the “bulletins” that you can blast out to everyone. When was the last time you went to a show based on a bulletin you saw on MySpace? [Assault Blog]

I can’t tell you the last time I’ve interacted with an actual fan on MySpace.  Almost every interaction I have is with other bands, and the ones that aren’t bands are booking agents/venues – which is really only the valid communication that goes on for us on MySpace.  The collaboration is on MySpace is also a downside, because typically when these venues list you on their promotion, they link our MySpace, which isn’t our best web presence out there.

The article lists some great resources & alternatives to using MySpace.  We use some of them including Twitter and Last.Fm.  There was one omission which I think is starting to become unavoidable: Facebook.  While I agree that it’s always best to own your own content and presentation, along with the concession that Facebook is a little harder for brand outreach – but you need to be where people are at – which right now is Facebook.

Until then, I think we’re going to start to wean ourselves off of MySpace.  I don’t think we’ll ever stop posting music, pictures and show schedules there, but only because it doesn’t hurt to keep things updated for booking agents.  However, I think it’s time for bands to focus their energies elsewhere.

I would suggest reading the article to get the context of my response.

What I find funny about the article is that Boyle insists that “newspapers provide context and meaning, both essential to our democracy”, yet in her own article she hypocritically takes the tweets of politicians out of context. By doing that, it’s easy to think that all these guys post about is what they’re having for lunch and who they’re with.  Part of exercising democracy is having transparency in your public figures. While traditional media has enjoyed being that gatekeeper, the pervasiveness of Twitter now gives constituents the opportunity to get a glimpse of their representatives, see what they’re working on (answering that question, “What do you even do in these sessions?”), but also understanding that our elected officials are people too – with families, friends and activities they love.

“Politicos can rip their opponents and highlight the work they’re doing without relying on the media to spread those messages.”

So instead of trying to decipher the media’s interpretation (complete with bias and possible agenda) of an official’s words, I can get the information directly from the source, where at least I have a sense of their own agenda.

Boyle brought up the report of the low Twitter site retention rate (estimated 40%), a stat offered by Nielsen, which doesn’t take into account that much of Twitter’s interaction is not based on the web site (the same way that MySpace and Facebook requires).  People access it through various tools and clients, as well as texting on their cell phone.  That said, the retention rate is a stat measured when growth happens.  The last time I checked, newspapers haven’t enjoyed any recent growth.

The most asinine quote of the article has to be this one:

“And many people who have been on the Twitter bandwagon promptly hopped off last week in the midst of the swine flu outbreak, when the site helped fuel a panic most public health officials have said is unwarranted.”

Unwarranted panic, as opposed to the tempered coverage offered by traditional media?  Give me a break! Every news program had this as their leading story every night! This was on the front page of every newspaper all week long!  This is the pot calling the kettle black!  If media was able to offer that context – which they supposedly have an abundance of – then why wasn’t this offered with all of the Swine Flu coverage?

Here’s the bottom line on Twitter: Twitter is what you make of it.  Some people will go and simply look to consume tweets from their favorite celebrity, but there are a degree of Twitter users that follow people who share their same interests and commonalities.  I follow people who live in my community, share my passions (drumming, technology, sports), and offer great insight in the things that I care about.  I don’t stop with simply consuming, I also offer my own insight.  Twitter is meant to facilitate conversation, and that’s probably the toughest thing for newspaper “dinosaurs” to grasp: a two-way media street.  Instead of relying on someone to ask questions for me, I can ask the questions of my figures myself.

And yes, you can also use Twitter to find out that LeVar Buron likes the new Star Trek movie.

Note: This is part of a series of posts I’m starting of “Here’s how to screw it up.”  In the course of my daily life I see a lot of people trying different things, and do a lot of things to screw it up.  This isn’t meant as an attack on the people who do these things, but rather the actions themselves.  Please feel free to add or debate anything listed here, my hope is that by looking at the way things are done poorly, we can see how things can be done well.

If it has been apparent over the last few weeks, Twitter has become mainstream.  You hear it on the nightly newscasts, sporting events, awards shows and the list of celebrities on Twitter is just blowing up.  After using Twitter for over 2 years and over 3,300 Tweets later, I’ve seen a lot of people try to take up the Twitter ball and fumble miserably.

So if you’re looking to get started on Twitter, here are some things you could do to screw it up:

• Following significantly (+20%) more people than the number that follows you: I understand when you’re starting out you obviously need to invest in following some people, but there’s nothing that screams “loser” quite like following 2x or 3x the followers you have.
• Use Twitter solely as an outlet to pimp yourself. There’s something to be said about personal branding and Twitter being an opportunity to do so, but if the only thing you’re contributing to the Twitter is talking about what you’re doing, posting links to your blog, talking about your services, etc – then you’re missing the point.  Converse with other people, say clever things and offer insight. I don’t want to see a never-ending commercial about yourself.  It’s pretty easy to see right through it, and people will wise up and drop you.
• Try to be an Expert at Twitter, and market that “skill”.  Let me save you the snake-oil money you’d spend on these “Experts” by offering you some free advice: Update consistently, be yourself, engage in conversations and try to add value.  Do you need an expert to teach you to use a cell phone?  Trust me, you’ll be fine on Twitter.  People will follow you if you’re interesting, not because you’re showing your LinkedIn URL in your Twitter background.
• Use Terms like “Tweeple” or say “Tweet ya later” We get it, Twitter is a great new form of communication and way to get information, but it doesn’t constitute it’s own vocabulary.  “Tweet ya later” may be a bit subjective, but when did someone say “Cell ya later” on their phone?
• Directly command or take advantage of your followers. The list of who can get away with this is very short: Shaq, Jason Calacanis.  Everyone else simply looks like a tool trying to wield an imaginary gauntlet.  It’s one thing to invite your followers to do something, or even ask a favor, but don’t order me around.
• Constantly send @ replies to celebrity Twitterers.  I understand, we all want to get that magical response from a celebrity Twitterer that we can print out and frame, but you’re not going to do that by pretending to be every celebrity’s best friend and sending them 25 replies.
• Misuse Twitter lingo. Not to contradict point #3, but there are a few terms that Twitter has coined: It’s called “TWEET-UP” not “TWITup”.
• Repeat Tweet over the course of a few hours.  We heard it the first time, it just wasn’t that compelling.  It’s one thing to keep bringing up the same topic by adding something new – for example, when I talk about Greenfoot’s shows, I say that we’re sound-checking, watching the first band, etc.  I keep mentioning the show, but find ways to add value.

I’m sure there’s plenty more, feel free to offer your “how to screw it up suggestions” in the comments.

You’ll have to forgive me for this rant.  I’ve pretty much have been eating granola bars all day.  My blood sugar is low, because I never had a lunch, thanks in part to lousy customer service.

My car hit the 90,000 mark last week, and I wanted to get my transmission serviced at the standard 90,000k mark (I noticed gears haven’t been shifting as smooth as they were).  I made the routine appointment, set for 8:30.  After bringing my car in I was told I’d have an ETA of 3 hours or so, no later than 1pm.  I got a ride to work and figured I could take a late lunch when my car is finished and I get a ride back to the Stealership.

Noon rolls around and no call, the 1pm ETA time rolls around and still no call.  I’m swamped with work so I keep working, waiting for that call.  By now it’s well into the afternoon and I pick up the phone to call them.  They don’t have a status on my car and the guy who’s handling my work-order was on a call and would need to call me back.  Another hour & 1/2 passes and still no call. I finally call them back very irate and angry.  I get transferred to the guy handling my work and he unapologetically says that their machine wasn’t working properly and they now just got it to work this afternoon.  It should be done about 5pm!

So work that was supposed to take about 3 hours ends up taking all day – I’m fine with that. I understand things come up, machines break down and estimates change.  However, when you never call me about it, don’t return my calls and then inform me that circumstances delayed their estimated time after-the-fact – all of that is unacceptable.  Might I have been called closer to the estimated time of completion I could have figured something else out for lunch, but to just keep me strung along like I have nothing better to do – that’s classless. I think this is the last time I’m going to the Spradley Barr Stealership for service.

While this was going on I wanted to vent my frustrations to Twitter, only to find that Twitter was down too.  If you manage to load the page, you find the following message (ala Techcrunch) “Something is technically wrong. Thanks for noticing – we’re going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon”.  A message like that is just insulting.  Many Twitter’ers, frustrated with all of the outages have talked about Boycotting Twitter – supposedly Wednesday is the day to not use Twitter. Many are skeptical for the notion of boycotting a free service – but I do understand where they’re coming from:

Regardless of whether the service is free, of if you’re charging parts & labor for your service – you have an obligation to inform your customers of your status and give them timely, relevant details to understand the issue and when you plan to have the service restored.  Many people might not care – they didn’t need the car until the end of the day anyway, or they may just reload Twitter sometime in the evening – but they shouldn’t have to go out of their way to understand when you’re going to deliver what you’ve promised.

Whether you’re Twitter or the Spradley Barr Service in Fort Collins: when things don’t go right be apologetic, and keep us updated. Is that too much to ask?